Conversation 848-007

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

I think it's good, Mr. President, because Roy actually has some hard-hitting, specific examples of program abuse

They can use that in their Lincoln Day speeches and their mail and their newsletters and all that.

And when we give them enough copies, they can get them to all the Republicans before they go home to the recess.

I'm also getting a little kid up for them on the, you're getting willing to take it again.

Yes, sir.

I'm hoping to get an object on Vietnam.

Colton's doing that.

Yes.

You've got to go and work with everybody.

One of the subjects that they all want to get on.

That's the question, sure.

But the amnesty, that is a wide issue, and we want to keep it wide.

And I know that you're trying to find a way to get a vote.

And I'd like that Senate, you can't, those bad Senators will never get up for a vote.

But in the House, if you can get House members along that, that is enough to defeat a member.

So, you know, it would be the son of a bitch, I'm sure, to help get you to get it.

And I've got a hard line to discuss about that.

Yeah, we can get an amendment offered on the floor if we can find a... A bill?

Yes, sir.

That is germane to, you know, that's the germane issue in the House.

It's so strict that we have to have a vehicle.

Well, maybe you'll...

I would, I would think that.

I would try it in the Senate.

I mean, if you have somebody, you probably won't have to try it.

I'm a little shy to put it out there.

You know, for the leader of the Senate, it's Bob Tan.

For some crazy reason.

Right.

Get his desk while he's sitting in his grave.

Well, yeah, but he wants one of those Peace Corps gimmicks that you can spend three years or something and, I don't know, soothe your conscience.

No, no, no, no.

You can't do that.

You can't let somebody go out and go to the Peace Corps where it's just completely safe, you know, and arrested.

It's a reward.

You ever seen those people in the Peace Corps, too?

Sure, you haven't heard, but it's a disaster, isn't it?

And so I don't take them down.

But the main thing is the people who haven't done it.

So many people, you know, confuse this with the Amnesty, the Lincoln Civil Guard Army.

They forget Lincoln's Amnesty was for the solid.

Who wasn't they?

Not for the deserters, right?

He was having them shot down.

Served in prison, he's right.

That's what we have to do now.

We've got a very good shooter.

We'll be very generous to our little interns on an individual basis if there's something wrong with their secondary, but they have to pay the price.

That's what we really get down to.

Well, I think you learned the other day in the news conference that we all make mistakes, and you don't think we have to live with those mistakes.

And that's everybody who understands that.

It's going to be awful hard because we would have to be dealing with the opposition and they could see what we were doing.

Some bills are introduced.

How will you come in with your budget bill?

You've got quite a problem there.

It's surprising, though.

Members we've talked to, a lot of guys really understand this, and they're really going to stand up for it.

The Democrats, unfortunately, are going to try to repass all those bills that were pocket vetoed last year, and we'll have to veto them again, I guess.

Veto them.

They'll make the issue very clear on the issue of taxes and prices and not education and not cities and all the rest.

Just keep it on that color, guys.

Keep getting it over and over again.

Anybody who wants it, put it in.

Raise prices.

In addition to repassing those bills, I think they're going to try to write in what they call mandatory language in some of the existing programs.

All right.

That's a mandatory tax increase.

We're going to try to add on the floor some amendments to raise taxes to go along with those.

Of course, it won't pass, but I think it will focus the issue pretty well.

That's a good idea.

What else do you think they need?

They shouldn't be winding around too much right now.

They've got the war issue now on their side.

Our people are so stupid, they don't know how to use the WF.

Well, in a way, they really are almost pathetic.

They ought to be talking about that rather than that young budget.

If they've got problems with it, take the positive side of it.

But then put an absolute cutoff of 11 on the ground rack.

And it is true that that is what the briefing takes place in.

We've got to get Scott and Ford out there for a briefing.

Also, that will give the members a chance to get back in and give me a chance to get back in.

So it will be meaningful.

It will be an hour and a half.

Hard to go with less than an hour and a half.

You know, they've got to gamble around.

They don't feel like we're going to make it.

That's undirected enough.

See, if we were to start at 10 and finish at 11.30, it would be 9.30 to 11, but it would be an absolute cutoff.

You should always make your agenda so that they're an hour and figure it out half an hour.

I'll give them a little wine.

I don't know if they're positive.

Maybe that...

We've tried.

I think we've given them an awful lot of material.

I think we give them too much.

The average congressman and senator today is so burdened down on the landscape.

They don't see people.

And the rest of them, he just doesn't sit down.

I remember when I was a congressman and senator, I used to sit down before the Lincoln period.

I wrote speeches.

I wrote them.

And they were damn good.

These guys do that.

They sit down.

And I've made them the people.

You've got to, these guys have got to sit and think in terms of share minds and that sort of thing.

And not just expect, well, somebody's going to do it.

The stuff I used to get, that you remember, you used to get from the National Committee of the Lincoln Day, it wasn't worth a damn.

They put in those quotes from Lincoln, most of which were spurious.

There was an awful lot of stuff.

Can't these folks, do we have guys up there who will sit down

Some do, Mr. President, some don't.

It's a mixed version.

Well, they're all smart folks.

I mean, they have to be.

There will be a Congress.

But I sometimes think, as I said at these meetings, that so few seem to be creative.

One of the people that surprised me, I must say, was Cedarburg the other day.

Oh, he was good.

He sounded better than any one of our leaders in some of the two years.

He just said, he's tight.

Whack, whack, whack.

He got wheels, and they all fight against each other.

Let him have it.

All right.

He gets emotional and carried away, and he really mixes it up, and he's a good guy for that.

I think he'll be good on that committee.

Appropriations.

All right.

Thanks for a little follow-up.

My nose is going to be easier to your mouth.

Sure, maybe.

Yeah.

No way.

I think so.

We have commitments out of leaders.

They were holding him for the impoundment list, which goes up today.

So they've got no excuse, and Mike and Hugh have indicated that they would really try to move him.

Everybody knows, everybody knows it's hard, he's a liberal.

And it's very hard for him to say, to him, for any other reason, responsible reason.

He's tough on you, too.

His response is he will back down.

Yeah, he stood right up the other day.

All of our people have done rather well.

They have.

Brennan did well, and...

Butts has been there.

And Butts up there.

Now, Butts is kind of weak in internal meetings, I've noticed, but up there with the Congressman, he stands right up and gives it to them.

Well, we understand the internal meetings.

That's okay.

Actually, they're all in for a pretty long time.

What's the problem with the Deputy Secretary of Defense?

Has that been approved yet?

Bill Clements, yes.

That's long time ago.

Why the hell wasn't he here for the soaring in?

They soared in over there.

For some reason.

Yeah, earlier.

He was confirmed earlier.

We're trying to get our friend Jack Marsh in the legislative position over there.

You know, former Congressman.

I don't think that the fellows around should be pretty good if they would just think it's what their pusses are.

You know what I mean?

They should be on the defensive.

You know, here they were squealing about the war for four years and going wild.

They should accept their due.

Now they've got that.

They should just keep their brains on the ground.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, it's murder.

You know, they've got it right from the air.

I mean, Goldwater's about the only one that I've seen that's been doing it.

Well, of course, it may be doing it.

That's the problem, Mr. President.

A lot of guys get up there and stand up and go to press galleries and film clips and everything, but the media won't cover it.

They take the positive news out of here and then go up there to get the opposition for controversy.

Well, I just want our guys to keep on up, you know, play a very positive, strong, aggressive line, and say, no, these other guys are on a bad way.

The reason that they're talking about it, Tom, is they don't want to talk about the war.

Let's get musky-ass, you know, what about your vote on all these things, boy?

Or read our predictions.

It's funny, Muskie and Proxmire were on one of these programs yesterday, talk shows, and not once did they talk about the war.

It was all about constitutional rights and all that.

Let's tell them to talk about the war and achieve the rest.

I think a picture will be served tomorrow at the leadership meeting, and then Scott will turn around and go to the policy luncheon, which is at noon, and quote you back.

I don't think his idea that we could would help.

Well, okay.

Bill, what you could do is,

Or even though it's usually 15 minutes, whatever.

Maybe you get Tom to cook, and then you come in maybe for 15 minutes.

I don't think Mark will be done until I'm in.

I don't think we need another big one after a long time.

You might have those in here.

What about the small ones?

I think about the, first of all, Bill, I want to get another loyalist list.

I mean, on the Democratic side, you work on the House, Senate, the loyalist list that we spoke about.

Would you give us one?

Our letter is apparently, where do you got them all?

It's apparently some of the newspapers, some of the guys put them out.

And then I think you should say, in the event of a first year, somebody should write you a letter.

The President has written, and we really had to migrate the people when they voted for us for 10 months.

Whenever you support the President, you grant some money.

Get the money.

And say, in addition to the 2% we're writing to those senators in Congress to support his work, we weren't saying anything against those agreements.

Do you have a point?

Sure.

I'm pretty good with this repeating, too, for some stuff that he might have in mind down there in the aisle.

Great.

On this business of this, let's get to the loyalist list for Democrats.

The House.

the ones that we've really got to work with to hold these folks to do that.

I would hope that we could have something down here after we...

for those guys that you send letters to.

You like them?

Well, they'll fight upon reception for a while.

Republican and Democrat.

And you could make a little short speech that you just want them to know that they stood with you and you appreciate it and haven't fought enough before.

Well, because we're going to have some vetoes coming up after Lincoln.

And if this is done in time, this riot, they will bolster that same group up to support us on vetoes.

All right.

You pick a date.

And what we'll do is, and I'll get the whole group in.

No, I certainly think this is the best Republican Senate in our country.

And a reception.

In fact, we could do it in terms of the, in fact, doing this because of history, just back from China.

And, you know, and the deal would obviously be starting to come back.

Thank you all.

Good.

You guys have a good deal down there.

be very effective and we didn't go back to them on some of these vetoes and it showed that the good guys who stand up are rewarding each other well you you've started taking time as quickly as possible and i would be fairly broad on that in other words if if for example guys have stood with us all the way and sort of buckled at the time of the peace effort bombing and then came back and let them in we understand that

But I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an accident.

No, it's just that it is a question.

It is a question.

Because I don't think people would understand that.

This president, he called.

This guy called.

Was there no reciter?

I'm just curious.

Some congressman from Ohio, another senator, he got the letter.

And I bet my comment said, well, he expected the man to have lost his sentence.

You know, he didn't send the letter.

We'll let you have too far.

We'll let it cool for a while.

Well, on our list, they missed one vote, perhaps.

No, no, no.

That's my point.

They missed one vote.

But it's the guy, John Lane, that stood with us, and he said good things afterwards.

And any Democrats that supported us in that caucus, he gets, you know what I mean.

And I understand that Democrats support us all along, and that may have drifted away in the caucus.

That's all right, too.

But there's a little broader with the Democrats.

There's a thick line, and there's even more against everything.

No more.

We're two there.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, uh, you probably work a little bit.